Merlin Timothy Larson is the youngest child of the Larson family from Blacksburg, South Carolina, born to a small town lawyer and his wife, the paralegal he’d left his first wife for. He was a bit of a loose canon in the family, in that he always had a knack for getting into trouble. The town being in the bible-belt meant the family were avid church-goers, but Merlin always hated it. The hymns were boring, the bible even more boring, and nothing about church was fun whatsoever. He dreaded Sundays from a young age, and would continually fake illnesses to try to get out of it, or flat out ditch it and do something more interesting like having water fights with friends, or prank calling the bible study group.

Merlin, subsequently, was diagnosed with ADHD when he was about eight years old. His frustrations began to turn into angry outbursts because people would get frustrated with him and just think he was a naughty little brat. Nothing could have been further from the truth. Thankfully, his parents knew to get him seen to rather than ignoring it and letting people think their kid was a shit. He does now need take Adderall, but it controls his symptoms pretty well, and as a result, his folks learned that the best way to keep him happy was encourage him to do things he loved. Healthy things, of course. Otherwise he would inevitably find mischief to get into. When the ADHD is well controlled, he is a bright and bubbly soul. He has loads of friends, a mischievous sense of humour, and pretty much a big kid. He is extroverted and spritely, and it's hard not to like him unless you're a dull and boring person with no sense of humour.

It turned out, Merlin had musical talent like his eldest brother, Damien, though in a much different form. Merlin loved acting, singing, and dancing, but he had more ambition to get into musical theatre. He proceeded to top his classes in drama and music, and had his sights sets on Broadway... of course. What kid who loved musical theatre didn't? Not that he ever though he had a chance. Not really. But he did want to go to a performing arts college, and he was determined to get to New York where Damien was because he missed his brother horrifically, and Damien didn't like coming home for visits. It was just an added bonus that Broadway was in New York.

When he found out about a competition on a musical theatre blog that Caden Drake, world renowned Broadway Producer, was putting out a call for talented male performers in their late teens or early twenties to send him audition videos because he needed to fill a part-time supporting role in one of his shows. The deeper Merlin dug, he discovered the part was on Footloose: The Musical, to job share with the guy, Billy, who played Willard. Billy had recently battled testicular cancer and had made the decision to cut his performing down to four shows a week instead of eight because eight was too physically taxing on him. He also wanted to care more for his husband, Ajay, son of rockstar, Corbyn Bellerose, who had a chronic illness.

It was an unbelievable opportunity, and because Merlin was already the the King of Selfies and taking videos of himself performing, he put together an audition video and sent it off. Now nineteen, Merlin had finished school the year before, but decided to take a year off when he hadn't been accepted into any of the colleges he applied for. He didn't really think he had any chance whatsoever of getting noticed in the thousands of videos Caden would likely receive. He literally fell off his seat when Caden's HR Manager called him up and told him Caden loved his audition and invited him to a live audition in New York. There was just one catch... it would be auditioning in front of Justin Campbell, the start of the show and Tony Award winner, and Justin and Billy would have the final say on who was recruited for the part.

Merlin pretty much lost is breakfast, lunch and dinner from nerves in the way of that phone call. Self-doubt began creeping in. He didn't even tell Damien he was coming, in case he fucked it all up and would end up mortified. Justin had hand-picked three potential people to come for the live auditions. However, then he fell ill and had to on a leave of absence, so the auditions were pushed back. What happened in the meantime was that one of the other guys who had been chosen started shooting his mouth off all over social media, bragging about how he was going to meet Justin and once they met, Justin would want to ditch his boyfriend for him. Of course, he was ditched immediately, so it left the competition down to just Merlin and one other guy.

Now, Merlin has stepped off a plane in New York and picked up at the airport by a chauffeur in a limo, courtesy of Drake Productions. He has no fucking idea what is going to happen next, and as much as he is trying not to get his hopes up, he knows he will be crushed if he fails.